Blog // Portraits

Here are a few images from a recent fashion-esque photo shoot at IUPUI. My task was to show new apparel available at the school’s bookstore. I don’t fancy myself as much of a fashion photographer, but I tried to treat this shoot as a miniature version of a fashion shoot. Armed with a couple of Profoto B1s, I shot all the models – student employees at the bookstore – within about a 50-yard radius of the store at the IUPUI Campus Center.

After May, things tend to slow down considerably on campus and this year has been no exception. I’ve had fewer big shoots and more small, one-off assignments. Here are a few favorites from a mix of interesting shoots so far this summer:

Indiana University Bloomington senior Sade Roberson, an intern at the West Baden Springs Hotel, poses for a portrait at the hotel on Wednesday, May 23, 2018. (James Brosher/IU Communications)

This spring my department worked on a project profiling a graduating senior at each of Indiana University’s campuses. The result was a combined video as well as a series of individual videos profiling students across the state. Working alongside our video guys, I captured candids and portraits of each student.

Graduate Gabriela Jaimes walks across the stage to receive her degree during the Indiana University Northwest Commencement at the Genesis Convention Center in Gary on Thursday, May 10, 2018. (James Brosher/IU Communications)

Emily Edwards, a graduating senior at IUPUC, laughs as she participates in a ukulele club meeting on campus in Columbus on Thursday, April 5, 2018. (James Brosher/IU Communications)

This is a quick portrait I shot recently of the mother-daughter duo – and Indiana University alumnae – who star in HGTV’s, “Good Bones”, a home renovation show filmed in Indianapolis’ resurgent Fountain Square neighborhood.

Mina Starsiak Hawk, left, and Karen E Laine pose for a photo on the porch of their office in Indianapolis on Thursday, May 18, 2017. The mother-daughter team are the stars of HGTV’s “Good Bones” where they rehab homes in Indianapolis’ Fountain Square neighborhood. Starsiak Hawk is a graduate of Indiana University Bloomington and Laine is a graduate of the Indiana University McKinney School of Law. (James Brosher/IU Communications)

Back in August, I photographed a few of Indiana University’s Olympic swimmers after they returned home from the Rio games. I had the opportunity to shoot their portraits for IU social media after a media day availability. Our social media folks were looking for standard shots of each of them holding their medals. After I got that specific shot with each swimmer, I quickly shifted and shot these portraits. I don’t believe they’ve been used before, but it’s an example of shooting something for yourself after you’ve got “the shot” at a shoot. For better or worse, I use a very similar lighting setup on most of my portraits. This setup was an attempt to break out of that. I hung an octabox directly above the subjects and lit them primarily while standing in front of a mostly-collapsed umbrella to try to mimic a ring flash look.

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to make portraits of a few Indiana University Bloomington employees who will be honored with staff merit awards next week. For the past several weeks, the only portraits I’ve shot have been lit and in the studio. It was refreshing to grab a 50 mm f/1.2 lens and challenge myself to find clean backgrounds in the environments where these staffers work on campus.

I spent a few hours back in June shadowing Dr. S. Michael Keller, the emergency room director at Marion General Hospital in Marion, Ind. The photos were for a story in The New York Times about patient satisfaction surveys and their effect on the opioid epidemic. Under the Affordable Care Act, hospitals’ Medicare reimbursements were tied to patient satisfaction surveys. The idea of this was to encourage quality care, but many health care professionals argue the surveys incentivized doctors to prescribe powerful and potentially addictive painkillers such as opioids to patients in order to score well on the surveys. Marion General bucked the trend by cutting opioid prescriptions, leading to a drastic drop in the patient satisfaction surveys.

Dr. S. Michael Keller, director of Marion General Hospital’s emergency department and ambulance services, examines William Joseph, a patient from Van Buren, Ind., in the Emergency Room on Wednesday, June 15, 2016, in Marion, Ind. Marion General Hospital urged its doctors to limit opioid prescriptions resulting in lowered patient satisfaction scores, particularly in pain management. As part of the Affordable Care Act, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) incentivizes quality care by rewarding hospitals that score well on patient satisfaction surveys. (James Brosher for The New York Times)

Dr. S. Michael Keller, director of Marion General Hospital’s emergency department and ambulance services, speaks with Deseric Inman, a patient from Marion, Ind. experiencing eye discomfort, in the Emergency Room on Wednesday, June 15, 2016, in Marion, Ind. (James Brosher for The New York Times)